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a r t i s t :: Bonnie Prince Billy
t i t l e :: Pond Scum
d a t e :: 2016-00-00
l a b e l :: Domino
g e n r e :: Folk
s o u r c e :: CD
b i t r a t e :: 703 kbps avg
e n c o d e r :: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V
t r a c k s :: 12
p l a y t i m e :: 41:57
s i z e :: 210.8MB
tracklist
1 (I Was Drunk At The) Pulpit 6:02
2 Death To Everyone 4:14
3 Arise, Therefore 4:03
4 Jolly Five (64) 4:42
5 Beezle 2:27
6 Jolly One (2/15) 3:31
7 When Thy Song Flows Through Me 2:20
8 The Houseboat (O How I Enjoy The 2:59
Light)
9 Trudy Dies 2:43
10 The Cross 2:06
11 Stable Will 2:47
12 The Idol On The Bar 4:03
releasenotes
When Will Oldham first recorded the song "(I Was Drunk at the Pulpit)" more
than 20 years ago, he was going by the name Palace Brothers. The song, from
his 1993 album There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You, was a meditation on
faith and fallibility. With its dense imagery and antiquated language, it gave
the impression of an actor treading the footboards, performing the role of an
old-time singer, staging a spiritual reckoning.
Around the same time, Oldham recorded a very different version of "Pulpit" for
a Peel Session, and it shows just how malleable his songs are. This
performance, which opens his new odds-and-ends comp Pond Scum, is slow and
deliberate. An acoustic and an electric guitar noodle solemnly. And OldhamÆs
voice is deeper and less distant; he pushes it up to the front of the song to
let the listener relish the richness and texture that age has bestowed on him.
Oldham isnÆt an actor anymore, but a sinner experiencing a spiritual crisis in
real time.
"(I Was Drunk at the) Pulpit" is a potent opener to Pond Scum, which collects
a few old Peel Sessions into a surprisingly affecting meditation on the nature
of faith. As these two versions of the song prove, itÆs not a redundancy, but
a compilation that emphasizes new ideas and overlooked themes in OldhamÆs
prodigious catalog. Oldham favors retrospectives that tweak the very idea of
retrospectives: Greatest Palace Music, from 2004, featured his Bonnie "Prince"
Billy alias covering songs by his Palace persona, and he followed it up eight
years later with an EP of self-covers called Now HereÆs My Plan. Even as they
condense and summarize his catalog, these releases are his most esoteric,
rewarding, and engaging in the context of his career, when a listener can
grasp the various allusions Oldham is making to himself.
Pond Scum falls squarely into that category, and may therefore be a fans-only
album. And yet, taken on its own terms, Pond Scum is also a good-faith effort
to plumb the nature of God. Not just any deity, but the distinctively American
one born in 1741 in Jonathan EdwardsÆ hellfire sermon "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God" and since then praised and perpetuated in countless old-time
folk and gospel songs.
Despite its innate humanism ("The world is within you, without is of mud"),
"(I Was Drunk at the) Pulpit" is the only real brimstone moment on Pond Scum.
Other songs are much more generous, some even celebratory: "Death to Everyone"
testifies that our days are sweeter for being numbered, and OldhamÆs band
sound like theyÆre not wasting a single moment. "When Thy Song Flows Through
Me" is lovely in its simplicity, a thank-you note to a higher power that has
blessed Oldham with the ability to make music.
Perhaps the big draw here is OldhamÆs cover of "The Cross," the most
spiritually explicit song by Prince. As it appears toward the end of his 1988
double album Sign 'O' the Times, the song sounds like a slightly perverse
altar call, teetering between the sacred and the secular. "We all have our
problems, some big, some are small," he sings. "Soon all of our problems will
be taken by the Cross." But Oldham undersells the sentiment, hinting that what
sounds like a consoling promise might actually be a threat of end times
reckoning.
As many people do when talking about God, Oldham occasionally lets language
get away from him, and the project, with its strengths and weaknesses,
illustrates an interesting tendency in OldhamÆs songwriting. HeÆs not
especially well known for writing about spirituality, but that may be due to
the fact that he often presents God in negative terms: Oldham sees a darkness
and describes it in detail, which implies a light that he either cannot or
will not see.
www.dominorecordco.de/artists/bonnie-prince-billy
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Bonnie_Prince_Billy-Pond_Scum-(WIGCD374)-CD-FLAC-2016-k4